Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) , the U.S. lender under fire from regulators and customers over abusive sales practices, posted its biggest quarterly profit increase in four years after taking a $3.35 billion gain related to passage of the U.S. tax law in December. Shares fell 0.73%.

BlackRock Inc. (BLK) said fourth-quarter profit more than doubled, as the largest U.S. money manager benefited from runaway investor demand for its iShares exchange-traded funds and a $1.2 billion net gain due to the U.S. tax law passed in December. The stock rose 3.2%.

Facebook Inc. (FB) fell 4.5% after the social media giant said it would re-tool its news feed to direct more content from the families and friends of its 2 billion monthly active users.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) tumbled nearly 1% after the chipmaker said its microprocessors were susceptible to both variants of the Spectre security flaw. AMD said several days ago there was a "near zero risk" that its chips were susceptible to the security flaw.

In U.S. economic news, the consumer price index in December rose 0.1%, meeting economists' estimates. Retail sales in December rose 0.4%.